The Everyday Gothic of Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen's Satire

I blame Jane Austen's cheeky parting words to the reader of Northanger Abbey for the confusion critics felt about the novel: "I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience" (206). Is the novel's superficially happy ending the result of General Tilney's interference in Henry and Catherine Morland's relationship or Henry's disobedience to his father? After I finished Northanger Abbey, but before I read any critical materials on the novel, I wondered whether Austen viewed Catherine Morland with disdain or sympathy. Was the novel a cautionary tale against reading gothic novels? Northanger Abbey appeared a fairly straightforward satire of Anne Radcliffe's gothic novels until Michael Sadleir published his "pamphlet" on the horrid novels. Suddenly everyone learned that the novels actually existed and that Jane Austen probably read them. Michael Sadleir and Devendra Varma have characterized each novel as a representative of particular gothic subgenres.

Northanger Abbey was Austen's first novel. Maybe her own ambivalence toward gothic novels formed the uneven tone of the novel? The novels had apparently provided her with entertainment during her youth, yet the form proved inadequate for her own purposes. Therefore she produced a straightforward critique of gothic novels. Marilyn Butler made a similar conclusion in "The Woman at the Window." The analysis misunderstands Austen's attempt to deal with women's writing and authority. She illustrated patriarchal domination both in the level of the narrative and a meta-critical level such as in her defense of the novel. The narrator's view of Catherine Morland parodies late eighteenth-century anxieties over women's reading. With a great deal of depth, Northanger Abbey critically engages women's writing, the patriarchal dominance of literature, and women's positions in English society. The form of the gothic novel provided the history, authority, and conventions for Austen's ambitious project.

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic opened up the possibility for a more serious consideration of Austen's use of the gothic as a feminist tool. While some critics might have difficulty imagining a more reactionary genre in the representation of women than the gothic, the choice makes sense for critiques of patriarchal oppression. At the time Austen penned Northanger Abbey in the late eighteenth century, the novel still was a relatively novel form. The mating of romances and novels engendered the gothic novel. While the patriarchal figure of Horace Walpole gave birth to the form in The Castle of Otranto, the maternal figure of Ann Radcliffe nursed the genre to full strength. The mother's milk of The Mysteries of Udolpho nourished Catherine Morland, Henry Tilney, and Isabella Thorpe. Michael Sadleir illustrated the subtext of the novel's opening. Austen pointed out the ways in which Catherine Morland failed to fill the shoes of the gothic heroine. Her mother survived Catherine's birth and young Catherine had the freedom to roll down the hill while her parents were preoccupied with the rest of the Morland brood. Austen's concern at the moment apparently lied with social realism. The lives of real people can be extraordinarily boring; hence most of her youth passes by in the matter of a few pages until she ventured off to the Allen's in Bath.

The history of the gothic genre provides a sensible explanation for Austen's choice for Northanger Abbey. Michael Sadleir traced the origins of the spirit behind the genre to the iconoclastic ideals of the French revolution. The use of ruins reflected the triumphs of nature over man and chaos over order. The impulse to subvert the status quo became a common element in gothic literature. Austen intended to critique patriarchal domination of English literature and society, so the adaptation of the gothic genre made sense. According to Devendra Varma: "there is no disputing that the Gothic romance drew its inspiration from a tangle of many external sources, yet its originating impulse sprang from the creative personal dreams and repressed 'unconscious' of its sensitive authors" (38). For an author like Jane Austen--concerned with the otherwise disdainful topic of women's social lives--the gothic provided the space for her to discuss the plight and abilities of women. Both Sadleir's and Varma's histories of the Gothic emphasize the role of the individual in shaping the gothic aesthetic.

The only questionable aspect of the choice was the moment in which Austen wrote her novel. The publication history of the novel only made the issue of timing more complicated. Austen wrote the novel in 1798. She prepared it for publication and sold it to a Bath publisher named Crosby. He sat on the book for thirteen years until Austen's brother bought the novel back for the original purchase price. Sadleir cited public taste as the reason Crosby chose to never publish Austen's manuscript. At the time Austen sold the Northanger manuscript she was unknown. After she achieved success with Pride and Prejudice why would an enterprising publisher not strike while the iron was hot, or at least ask for more money for the return of the manuscript? Jane Austen could offer no explanation in her "Advertisement by the Authoress." According to Sadleir, the "pastiche" that Northanger Abbey employed was not fashionable at the time of the sale of the manuscript, but was at the time of its actual publication in 1818.

In the "Advertisement," Austen further noted that tastes had changed in the years before the publication of the novel. Varma placed the "efflorescence" of the gothic at the 1790s, the decade in which Austen wrote Northanger Abbey. Readers who voraciously devoured gothic novels might not have enjoyed reading a book that played with their sensibilities or wholehearted enjoyment of horror novels. Mrs. Barbauld wrote in 1810 that "books of this description are condemned by the grave, and despised by the fastidious; but their leaves are seldom found unopened, and they occupy the parlour and the dressing-room while productions of high name are often gathering dust upon the shelf" (Varma 1). The heavy reading and use of circulation libraries explained the astonishing mortality rate of gothic texts. That might partially explain the delayed publication of Northanger Abbey. While the gothic experienced its efflorescence in the 1790s, simultaneously the conditions for its slip into obscurity evolved. Essentially plagiarized novels emerged to capitalize on the public interest and the field became saturated with gothic literature. As gothic literature emphasized the decay of architecture, civilization, and bodies, histories of gothic literature emphasize the decay of the genre. Even though the genre supposedly died with Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, elements of the style lived on the work of Charlotte Bronte, Wilkie Collins, and other "sensation" novelists. Shortly after the publication of Northanger Abbey, Quarterly Reviewpublished a rhapsodic retrospective on Jane Austen to celebrate the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. The reviewer evidently felt a great deal of fatigue over the glut of gothic and romantic literature and welcomed Austen's more realistic portraits and plotlines. While the reviewer faulted the weaker plotline as proof of the novel's status as one of Austen's lesser accomplishments, he or she thoroughly enjoyed the inflated ego of John Thorpe. Although the publication history of Northanger Abbey might have been most beneficial to Jane Austen's financial well-being, it was fortunate for the critical reception of the novel.

Novel writing was one of the few somewhat socially acceptable creative outlets for women. Catherine Gore managed to support a large family with novel writing. Yet anxieties about women's authorship and reading endured. Henry Tilney reflected patriarchal anxieties over women's authority and authorship in late eighteenth-century England. When Henry first met Catherine, he expressed some concern over how he would appear in Catherine's recollection of the party in any private diary she might keep. The diary was a private genre not intended for publication, but the thought of finding himself subject to a woman's discourse caused him some discomfort. The aspect of being in a journal that apparently worried Henry the most was how he would appear to other women though Catherine's representation. Henry understood the importance of the journal in sharing information among women, but Catherine did not keep a journal. He also ascribed the ability to write good letters to being female. The only faults Henry noted among women letter writers were their "total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammer" (13). The only ways in which he found women's letter writing deficient were the technical aspects of punctuation and grammar. The passage implied that female writing poured out onto the page without regard to structural integrity. The implication was that less artifice and artfulness equaled greater sincerity in women's writing. The same characteristics of women's writing circulate in contemporary feminist discourses of women's writing. While such an analysis might prove true of certain aspects of a work, it frequently overlooks other aspects that might contradict a female-gendered voice.

Yet Henry Tilney hardly was a chauvinist male who looked down upon a woman at every opportunity. In fact, he startled Mrs. Allen with his knowledge about muslin and women's dress. Additionally, he openly admitted to Catherine his affinity for gothic romances such as The Mysteries of Udolpho. The yarn he spun about the Abbey Catherine was to visit was worthy of a published novel. In some ways, he almost seems a prototype for the "new man" who became a common character in women's novels at the end of the nineteenth century. His anxieties reflected the political anxiety over certain types of reading and writing, particularly imaginative works. The issue of versimilitude became an important criterion for critics to judge a work, because dwelling on speculative topics might make people unhappy with their lot. As Frederick Douglass learned to read and write, he became extremely unhappy with the position of African Americans in the United Sates. He desired more for his life. Whites saw the enfranchisement of African Americans as a bad thing and a threat to their economic and political interests. Women's suffrage and education continued to be important issues in England, with few substantial gains before the early twentieth century. Women's literature became a hotly contested field in Austen's time.

Jane Austen defended the novel from its patriarchal critics and also attacked the patriarchal domination of English literature and culture. The best passage for consideration of Austen's defense of the novel was her own summary of the argument. Novels were "only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language" (22). For Austen, the novel writers possessed vast stores of knowledge with which to reproduce the conditions of life with a high degree of verisimilitude. As a form, it also allowed for a multi-vocality in which readers could listen to more than one voice. The narrator filtered most of the dialogue in the novel, but the use of dialogue and multiple levels of narrative facilitated more communication. Finally, Austen listed the pleasure of reading as one of the positive aspects of the genre. The "wit and humour" provided pleasurable emotional diversion for readers and the "best chosen language" appealed to readers' aesthetic senses. The novel was a particular mode of communication and one that Austen understandably privileged in her own work.

In her defense of the novel, Austen drew attention to the female reading subject and the societal judgments placed upon her as a novel reader. It would have been far easier to produce The Spectator with pride as a subject of one's reading as opposed to something of more dubious merits such as The Necromancer. The anxiety of judgment about novel reading played out later in the trip to Beechen Cliffs where Catherine pretended to dislike novels. Literary criticism produced a "panopticon" effect for women readers in the late eighteenth century (Foucault 201). Aware that men watched women's reading, women reproduced the discourses that derided the literature they read, reinforcing the primacy of patriarchal literature. Given women's limited educational choices, the novel was one of the forms they could engage. Rather than a mere humorous effort at self-effacement, Catherine's dismissal of novel reading was a common attempt among women to enter the high stakes public discourse of literary value (Flint 10). Gothic novels suffered critically for the depiction of immoral characters and circumstances.

If the English literati wanted to produce a virtuous English subject that would aid the empire, it wanted people to read the works that would instill those values. Reading about villains, trapped women, and violence might corrupt otherwise pure and innocent minds. According to Flint, female readers' naiveté was the primary concern of women about women readers. The male anxiety over moral corruption led to declaring circulating libraries the "ever-green tree of diabolical knowledge" (27).

"Feared too was the reading of plays, poetry, and novels, and other 'romance' which offered readers means of escape into attractive alternative worlds. When literature elevated the feelings of readers, many believed, it could help to sustain religious and moral values. But when it conferred an apparent legitimacy on ideas, emotions, and types of behaviour which readers had not previously seen articulated and fixed in print, it became dangerously unsettling" (St. Clair 12).

The people in power evidently took the iconoclastic rhetoric of the Romantics quite seriously and considered the articulation of alternative possibilities for people who might then seek more out of life to be a threat to the status quo. Attitudes toward different types of literature took on a political dimension and the suppression of questionable material became vital to the preservation of the state. Who could challenge the English crown? The specters of Guy Fawkes, Oliver Cromwell, and the French Revolution endured in Victorian England. Austen's subsequent criticism about the lack of verisimilitude in literature offered a couple interesting angles of consideration. At first, it criticized the histories for their lack of relevance to modern lie. Or did Austen primarily level her criticism at novels that failed to accurately reproduce life?

As much as Austen appeared to criticize novels and novel reading, she rushed to its defense at other places. The gothic narratives that Catherine was so familiar with appeared to have led her astray while visiting Northanger Abbey. Henry Tilney primed her with his mock-gothic story and she misread the signs at Northanger Abbey that produced her own wild narrative about the imprisoned Mrs. Tilney. Gilbert and Gubar sum up the effects of Catherine's misreading: "Again and again we see the kind of malediction novels confer on Catherine, teaching her to talk in inflated and stilted clichés, training her to expect impossibly villainous or virtuous behavior from people whose motives are more complex than she suspects, binding her to the mundane selfishness of her contemporaries" (132). Yet Austen defended the novelists as victims of "pride, ignorance, or fashion" (21). The real issue behind Catherine's misreading was her inability to read critically. The primary responsibility for Catherine's inability lied with her lack of formal education. The secondary cause was the literature she read which only talked about her personal issues in an allegorical manner. Gilbert and Gubar were the first critics to catch onto the allegorical nature of the discussion in women's literature of imprisonment, and Nina Auerbach expanded on the theme of "Romantic imprisonment" that became important to Jane Austen. Gilbert and Gubar emphasized Catherine's imprisonment in Henry Tilney's fictions; Auerbach saw Catherine's imprisonment within in her own mind. I want to emphasize Catherine's imprisonment within patriarchal social structures. At this point, it is tempting to point the finger at women novelists such as Ann Radcliffe for failing to deal with women's issues in a plainer manner, but one must remember that women authors faced the same difficulties as Catherine Morland in gaining an access to education and entering the discourses of high and low culture.

The critic of gothic literature that most closely articulates the theoretical basis for my consideration of Northanger Abbey was Diane Hoeveler. She offered a brief history of gothic criticism: "the female gothic genre was understood before 1970 primarily as a psychological fiction exploring the fears and guilt attendant on sexual maturation, but these works can more accurately be read as elided representations of the political, socioeconomic, and historical complexities of women's lives under a newly codified bourgeois ideology" (5). After critics had established the criteria of the genre, the task became to understand what the gothic meant. The popularity and influence of psychoanalytic criticism formed the former approach while pushes to develop interdisciplinary and more relevant and accessible approaches formed the latter. Hoeveler viewed Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women as the text that floated alongside The Mysteries of Udolphoover Austen's novel. Through the lens of Bakhtin, Hoeveler saw that Austen "inflate[d] the importance of issues explored in women's literature under the cover of deflating the excesses of such literature" (125). Through Northanger Abbey, Austen "authenticated narratives of female complaint" (126). The voice of "victim feminism" that Austen employed in the subtext and more loudly in her defense of the novel was a rhetorical mode that arose from certain gender codes. In order for people to listen to the female complaints, novels and other cultural works had to give the complaints some legitimacy and authority.

Much of the criticism of Northanger Abbey focused on General Tilney and his monstrous qualities or the lack thereof. Robert Hopkins offered the most helpful research into the General's monstrous qualities. Rather than focus on Catherine's misunderstandings of the General's character, Hopkins looked into English attempts to monitor political dissent in pamphlets. The General, who spent his nights poring over political pamphlets for questionable material was part of the state's apparatus to monitor political dissent. Austen's point was that "the real world of the Gordon Riots is far more Gothic than the episodes of any Gothic romance "(217). The historical context of the novel became the main avenue for the consideration of the meaning of the gothic in Northanger Abbey, then. Hopkins speculated that Austen might have read the account of the Gordon Riots in The Annual Register before she wrote Henry's dismissal of Eleanor's flight of fancy that lawlessness might reign in England. Fortunately, power brokers such as General Tilney had his hands on the ropes and could enjoy his pineapples while others rioted due to lack of food. The threat of political violence followed closely from ambivalent attitudes toward the exploration of new ideas, mainly through reading. Having witnessed the French Revolution, the English "politicians, churchmen, teachers, authors, and journalists of the time anxiously weighted the benefits and the dangers. Should the prospect of a more informed population be welcomed as a liberation from ignorance?" (St. Clair 12). Hence the numerous critics in the literary world who attempted to filter the shelves and libraries full of literature so people would know which literature would edify rather than corrupt. Should it be any wonder that periodicals and conduct books appeared in order to show people what to read and how to act? The wane of the aristocracy, the growth of the bourgeoisie, and the education of the underclass came to influence literary value.

Austen's gothic sections while Catherine Morland stayed in Northanger Abbey were seductive and Montague Summers, George Levine, and I wondered or perhaps hoped that Catherine's suspicions would prove true. Catherine interpreted various signs from General Tilney, such as his declining to enter the grove that was a favorite walking path of Mrs. Tilney's as evidence of General Tilney's guilty conscience. The supposed manuscript that Catherine discovered in the wardrobe that was to record Mrs. Tilney's sad story only turned out to be a laundry list. Ironically, a laundry list became an important piece of evidence in The Moonstone, when a policeman attempted to determine which household member might have disturbed a fresh paint job on a door. The person who disturbed the paint could have been the thief of the valuable moonstone. An examination of the laundry list failed to yield any clue who might have sent the soiled laundry away in order to cover up evidence. Yet an item as banal as a laundry list might provide a key to the novel's meaning, as Gilbert and Gubar suggested: "Could Austen be pointing to the real threat to women's happiness when she describes a heroine finding a laundry list?" (135). Rather than a list of what a launderer washed and how much charged for each item, laundry lists become a recorded official history of women's subjugation and inferior status to men in English society. Men produced histories and non-fiction books while women toiled in the privacy of the home. Different powers come with different roles, and usually men had more of a say in the formulation of English public policy. Scrawled manuscripts that provide evidence of evil torture might exist, but most of the time, profound exposures occur through less sexy and pleasurable means. Readers might consider the earlier cited political context provided through the analysis of General Tilney for the indirect manner in which Austen and other women writers wrote about women's issues. The Elizabethan era brought the ossification of the institutions that consolidated the surveillance state. Through surveillance and criticism, the English government attempted to maintain political control and influence the development of English literature.

Jane Austen further parodied gothic novels through the introduction of Mrs. Allen. As Mrs. Allen appeared in the novel, the narrator mused: "the reader may be able to judge, in what manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will probably contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is capable--whether by her imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy--whether by intercepting her letters, ruining her character, or turning her out of doors" (6). Austen used the language of novels to open up a kind of meta-criticism here where she clearly played with the expectations of readers. She laid down the criteria for a gothic novel. Mrs. Allen should have soundly ruined Catherine's reputation by the third volume. Mrs. Allen never sought to actively do any harm to Catherine, yet she inadvertently nearly did. Whenever Catherine asked for permission to go somewhere or do something, Mrs. Allen dismissively gave her approval. She failed to warn about potentially harmful circumstances, such as venturing out in a carriage ride with John Thorpe, until after the fact. Look no further than Emma to find the danger of riding alone with men in carriages, when Mr. Elton "makes love" to Emma Woodhouse in the private confines of the carriage. The damage to either Catherine or Emma's reputation could have been as devastating as any sexual assault.

An interesting passage of gothic parody occurred during Catherine's debut in the Upper Room at Bath. In laying out the common characteristics for a gothic narrative, Michael Sadleir included an emphasis on the perpendicular over the horizontal (176-77). Jutting crags appeared regularly in gothic narratives. The use of "Upper Rooms" emphasized the verticality and accompanied an actual ascent during the party, a characteristic spatial movement in gothic narratives. Auerbach viewed Catherine's ascent as a parody of the Romantic sublime ascent up the mountain. The clearer vision from above, however, gave Catherine a clearer view of her own imprisonment (24). Despite the beautiful scene finally impressing her with the grandness of the ball, she saw the "danger" of the situation. The only real dangers at the surface of the narrative were the threats that Mrs. Allen articulated--that her hair might have been mussed or her muslin torn. Yet the presence of the jostling faceless "mob" produces some unease, particularly when any assembly of a large number of people had the potential to erupt in violence. Austen might playfully allude to the riots again here. She used "imprisonment" to humorously exaggerate Catherine's plight. Catherine and Mrs. Allen did not know anyone at the party, so they could not engage in pleasant conversation with anyone. Being alone at a party is a bad feeling. Yet the threatening members of the mob were Catherine's "fellow-captives" (8). The party was a place to socialize, flirt, and exercise, but also a place of alienation. The concept of "alone in a crowd" described the extreme alienation individuals felt in the post-modern era as a result of angst, capitalism, or whatever cause writers chose. The passage showed the ways in which Austen played with genres such as realism, gothic, and even historical novel. As Austen's "Advertisement" indicated, she had the tastes of the reading public, publishers, and reviewers to contend with and the cross-genre narrative allowed her to appeal to different audiences with different aspects. The gothic elements appealed to gothic readers. The parody and realism appealed to reviewers fatigued with Romantic and gothic literature.

Auerbach further expanded upon the scenes of imprisonment in Northanger Abbey: "the coach of John Thorpe's mock-captivity, or the ominous abbey itself, where, in true Romantic fashion, Catherine's greatest imprisonment is her humiliating expulsion thence" (23). Further, the comic ending with the marriage between Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney ominously echoed the promise of Frankenstein's creature to be present on Victor's wedding night. The whole body of Austen's work became one long flight from imprisonment. The promise or curse that Catherine could not avoid was patriarchal imprisonment. The idea of the doppelganger also became important in Auerbach's criticism because it represented the ability of the individual to alienate from the self and "a sobering reminder as well of the mask of commonality that passes for family happiness" (20). The otherwise ordinary marriage scene became a zombie-like marriage of going through a rite of meaningless social passage.

The gothic novel provided the ideal genre for Jane Austen's first novel Northanger Abbey. The emphasis on the individual's role in shaping the history of the genre and the focus on individuals in the narratives provided the means through which Austen could authenticate the voice of female complaint. She wrote the novel at the high point of the gothic genre when authors nearly had realized the full potential of the genre and had a sustainable readership. The exact moment of the writing of the novel might not have been ideal for its publication, so it was delayed while the publisher who purchased the manuscript for ten pounds sat on it. After Austen's success, her brother bought the manuscript back for the original purchase price. An explanation for this strange occurrence has been lost to history thus far. William St. Clair noted that Crosby might have returned the manuscript in order to avoid breach of contract accusations(580). The book sold well; published with Persuasionit sold at least 20,000 copies between 1818 and 1890. Pride and Prejudice was her bestseller and St. Clair declared that in Victorian times, "Austen appears to have remained an author mainly for the middle classes" (580). Technology improvements reduced the cost of the novel, but the price reduction failed to have a significant impact on readership. Northanger Abbeyfailed as both straightforward gothic narrative and straightforward gothic satire. Michael Sadleir claimed the novel's popularity suffered due to its doubleness. In light of Austen's ambiguous conclusion, critic's ambivalence toward the text makes sense. The multiple genres and layers of meaning appealed to different audiences for different reasons. The 1818 publication date of the novel seemed ideal, as a reading public fatigued from a glut of gothic literature welcomed the more superficial turn toward the realistic.

Yet Jane Austen's textured narrative pointedly criticized English society and patriarchy. Through her strident defense of the novel, she attacked the unimaginative histories that failed to produce anything novel or relevant to readers' lives. Additionally, she attacked the patriarchal domination of English literature and culture that derided novels in favor of supposedly more objective histories. Austen ventured into the contentious debate on women's culture and women's positions within English society. A more comprehensive education instead of reading some gothic novels in isolation would enable women to avoid Quixote-like fantasies of imprisoned or murdered wives. The gothic elements of Northanger Abbey, in addition to poking fun at the conventions of romances such as The Mysteries of Udolpho, also drew attention to the actual horrific elements of English society. The primary horror was the subjugation of woman. Through they might have fought against it all their lives or sought to flee from it, still it would be present with them on their wedding night and the rest of their lives, as Frankenstein's creation promised. The oppression of women created a doubleness that alienated women from themselves but also led to the formation of bonds between women. Mrs. Tilney becomes an unconscious figure to Catherine of her own subservient position--the victim of cruel men. Gilbert and Gubar wrote on Catherine's identification with Mrs. Tilney and Miss Tilney. Auerbach primarily interpreted the identification as an expression of the two-facedness of male authority, and undoubtedly I think it reinforced an extreme polarized view of gender and its artificiality.

Secondly, Austen showed citizen's complicity in state surveillance and exploitation in the character of General Tilney, who perused pamphlets for subversive material and enjoyed pineapples while other people rioted over their inability to purchase food for sustenance. In Austen's time with the waning of the aristocracy and the growth of the bourgeoisie a contentious public debate over the effects of increased literacy and the growth of literature emerged. Reading could be a moral act in service of the state or it could serve immoral subversive purposes. Thus the necessity of someone like General Tilney to censor material and nip any dissent in the bud before it bloomed into any kind of movement. Because of the surveillance of literature, Austen only dealt with women's social positions in a fairly indirect way. In linking the entrapped gothic heroines of romances with the situation of an unremarkable middle-class girl such as Catherine Morland, Austen showed the "everyday gothic." The threat to Catherine Morland was not General Tilney as the "Bluebeard" figure--it was General Tilney the censor. John Thorpe's ego and Mrs. Allen's apathy did more to ruin her reputation than a wicked woman who actively sought to ruin her life in the third volume.

Works Cited

"ART. V.-Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion." Quarterly Review, 24:48. 28 Nov. 2008 http://pao.chadwyck.co.uk/PDF/1228027445647.pdf

Auerbach, Nina. "Jane Austen & Romantic Imprisonment." Jane Austen in a Social Context. Ed. David Monaghan. Totowa: Barnes & Noble, 1981.

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. NY: EP Dutton, 1922.

--. Emma. Project Gutenberg: 2008. 6 Sept. 2008. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/158/158-h/158-h.htm>

Butler, Marilyn. "The Woman at the Window: Ann Radcliffe in the Novels of Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen." Gender and Literary Voice. Ed. Janet Todd. NY: Holmes & Meier, 1980.

Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader. NY: Oxford UP, 1993.

Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish. NY: Penguin, 1977.

Gilbert, Sandra & Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale UP, 2000.

Hoeveler, Diane. Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontes. University Park: Penn State UP, 1998.

Hopkins, Robert. "General Tilney and Affairs of State: The Political Gothic of Northanger Abbey." Philological Quarterly. 57: 213-24.

Levine, George. "Translating the Monstrous: Northanger Abbey." Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 30: 335-50.

Sadleir, Michael. Things Past. London: Constable, 1944.

St. Clair, William. The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. NY: Cambridge UP, 2004.

Summers, Montague. The Gothic Quest. NY: Russell, 1964

Varma, Devendra. The Gothic Flame. NY: Russell, 1966.